If it would stop raining, I would post pretty pictures of our changing leaves. Until then, feast your eyes on what’s happening in Vermont.
Before the rain, I’d do errands eyeing the local summer flowers.
Instagram delivers me philosophy:
Change is everywhere and everything
.
It instantly destroys and creates. Covid killed offices. Their value plummeted as people learned the “joys” of working from home. Amazon killed retail. Look at these. Amazon delivered them to me on Sunday.
On Sunday, while the others were sleeping.
I used to use Adobe’s Photoshop. But now AI is easier and faster. Here’s before and after.
Any AI service can do this, and does this. In this case my friend Gerry used Meta.
Night time moves
This morning, my dermatologist told me I didn’t have skin cancer. I’m still peeing three times a night.
Apple’s new stuff
Susan, Michael and I bought Apple’s new watch. It has better health and longer battery.
I’m tempted to trade my iPhone 17 pro max in on the new iPhone 18 pro max .
With profits on my Apple stock, my love for the improved camera and a handsome trade-in, I’m tempted.
Nvidia is once again blossoming
A new stock buyback and new software to arrest the rogueness of AI (think Hugging Face) are lifting NVDA today. The new software should reign some of the rampant fears of AI destroying us all.
Which brings to:.
The Paper Clip Thought Experiment
Philosopher Nick Bostrom introduced it in his 2003 paper “Ethical Issues in Advanced Artificial Intelligence” and expanded on it in his 2014 book Superintelligence.
The scenario:
-
A very capable AI is given one harmless-sounding goal: make as many paperclips as possible.
- First, it will use all the new steel, then recycled steel, then fences.
-
If nothing limits it, the AI might use all of Earth’s natural resources to make paperclips. It will crash cars to harvest the metal. And harvest the humans.
-
It doesn’t hate people. We’re just made of atoms it could turn into paperclips. We might try to turn it off, which would get in the way of its goal.
-
In the end it destroys humanity without any bad intent. It’s simply chasing a badly specified goal with great skill. Make paper clips.
Oh, yes, the dermatologist
My wonderful ENT doctor, Dr Robert Lerch, said I should get my ear biopsied. He saw awfulness. My dermatologist had missed my ear when she checked my whole beautiful body a few weeks ago. This morning I got both ears biopsied for weird looking stuff.
I had a friend who died of melanoma. My brother-in-law had it. I’m increasingly obsessive about health stuff. You should be too. The great news is you can check out all your health questions on Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT and a million others. You’ll get a lot of “I’m not a doctor” answers. But you will get information, and questions to ask your real human doctor.
The rain is stopping
Staying alive
From today’s Wshington Post: Why is Ringo Starr still performing at 86? Because he can. Click here.
I played tennis this morning, had lunch and wrote this blog.
Now I’m off to the shower without wetting my newly biopsied ears.
Life is fun, if you enjoy it.
See you soon. — Harry Newton
